Holiday Celebrations Go Virtual! Former Time Life Executive Launches LifeTimes.com, a New Kind of Internet Community for Family and Friends

Business Wire, Nov 11, 1998

WASHINGTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 11, 1998--Want to be together for the holidays? Invite your family and friends to your virtual festivities with a new Web site that launches today at www.LifeTimes.com. LifeTimes.com is a new kind of Internet community that brings together family and friends to celebrate special occasions with the ease and immediacy of the Internet.

Founded by former Time Life executive Bob Ellis, LifeTimes.com is a free Web service where people send animated greeting cards with music, create special occasion Web pages with private chat areas, sound and photos, select unique handcrafted gifts and more. With these Web tools, family and friends can celebrate holidays and all the important family occasions from births and birthdays to baptisms, weddings, reunions, retirements, anniversaries and much more.

"With our fast-paced lives, staying connected with the people we care about has become a real challenge," said Bob Ellis, founder and chairman of LifeTimes. "That's why we created LifeTimes.com - to bridge the distance that separates us by geography and generations. LifeTimes.com makes it easy for people to stay connected with each other, from young kids to grandparents."

For every family occasion, there's a hand-picked collection of more than 200 gifts, not usually found in retail stores or other Web shopping sites.

The LifeTimes staff spent a year scouring craft shows, gift shows and even county fairs to find special gifts created by artisans and family-owned businesses that were well-priced, met quality standards and could be shipped internationally.

The gift area completes the full experience for online celebrations. For example, on birthdays, a visitor to the site can create a special online area for family and friends to send electronic notes, create birthday cards, record personal voice messages, and buy and send a gift from the custom gift collection.

LifeTimes.com is designed for even the most novice Internet users. When creating special occasion Web pages, there is a helpful LifeTimes wizard that acts as a step-by-step guide to selecting background artwork, adding graphic headers, importing family photos and recording a personal tribute in your own voice. The Web site also includes guestbooks for family and friends to sign in and leave personal messages and a reminder service to keep track of important dates.

LifeTimes is built around celebrating special occasions, and for many people, the upcoming holidays are some of the most special of all. This means you will find many fun, useful holiday tools on LifeTimes, including original, animated holiday greeting cards and the ability to create online annual holiday letters with family photos included. You can also add festive holiday music to any of your special occasion pages and choose from a wide variety of original holiday clipart. In addition, frequent on-site contests will honor outstanding Web pages created on LifeTimes, and page creators will also be invited to participate in special holiday contests.

"LifeTimes.com brings together, in one place, all of the necessary tools that help people need to celebrate meaningful occasions online," says Kathleen Miller, president of Lifetimes.com. "We have found that, more than ever, people are looking for ways to celebrate and keep in touch with family and friends. The Internet provides a unique and creative way to do just that."

About LifeTimes.com

LifeTimes.com is a new kind of Internet community that brings together, in one place, all the necessary tools to celebrate special occasions with family and friends. The site provides free services for creating interactive Web pages and greeting cards and also sells unique, custom gifts. LifeTimes.com was founded by former Time Life executive Bob Ellis who has developed prize-winning interactive products for Time, AOL and CNN.

Ellis currently serves as chairman at LifeTimes.com. The production team of LifeTimes.com consists of the team that formerly developed Compact Publishing, a pioneering multimedia publishing company. Executive offices are located in Washington, D.C. and can be contacted at 202-237-0087 or via the Web site at www.lifetimes.com.